Chapter I
Parents
March 27–April 21, 462 H.E.
Pirate’s Swoop, Tortall, on the coast of the Emerald Ocean
George Cooper, Baron of Pirate’s Swoop, second in command of his realm’s spies, put his documents aside and surveyed his only daughter as she paused by his study door. Alianne—known as Aly to her family and friends—posed there, arms raised in a Player’s dramatic flourish. It seemed that she had enjoyed her month’s stay with her Corus relatives.
“Dear Father, I rejoice to return from a sojourn in our gracious capital,” she proclaimed in an overly elegant voice. “I yearn to be clasped to your bosom again.”
For the most part she looked like his Aly. She wore a neat green wool gown, looser than fashion required because, like her da, she carried weapons on her person. A gold chain belt supported her knife and purse. Her hazel eyes contained more green than George’s own, and they were set wide under straight brown brows. Her nose was small and delicate, more like her mother’s than his. She’d put a touch of color on her mouth to accent its width and full lower lip. But her hair …
George blinked. For some reason, his child wore an old-fashioned wimple and veil. The plain white linen covered her neck and hair completely.
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you plan to join the Players, then?” he asked mildly. “Take up dancing, or some such thing?”
Aly dropped her pretense and removed her veil, the embroidered cloth band that held it in place, and her wimple. Her hair, once revealed, was not its normal shade of reddish blond, but a deep, pure sapphire hue.
George looked at her. His mouth twitched.
“I know,” she said, shamefaced. “Forest green and blue go ill together.” She smoothed her gown.
George couldn’t help it. He roared with laughter. Aly struggled with herself, and lost, to grin in reply.
“What, Da?” she asked. “Apart from the colors, aren’t I in the very latest fashion?”
George wiped his eyes on his sleeve. After a few gasps he managed to say, “What have you done to yourself, girl?”
Aly touched the gleaming falls of her hair. “But Da,” she said, voice and lower lip quivering in mock hurt, “it’s all the style at the university!” She resumed her lofty manner. “I proclaim the shallowness of the world and of fashion. I scorn those who sway before each breeze of taste that dictates what is stylish in one’s dress, or face, or hair. I scoff at the hollowness of life.”
George still chuckled, shaking his head.
“Well, Da, that’s what the students say.” She plopped herself into a chair and stretched her legs out to show off her shoes, brown leather stamped with gold vines. “These look nice.”
“They’re lovely,” he told her with a smile. “Which ‘they’ is it that proclaim the hollowness of the world?”
Aly flapped a hand in dismissal. “University students. Da, it’s the silliest thing. One of the student mages brewed up a hair treatment. It’s supposed to make your hair shiny and easy to comb, except it has a wee side effect. And of course the students all decided that blue hair makes a grand statement.” She lifted up a sapphire lock and admired it.
“So I see.” George thought of his oldest son, one of those very university students. “Don’t tell me our Thom’s gone blue.”
Now it was Aly’s turn to raise a mocking eyebrow at her father. “Do you think he even notices blue-haired people are about? Since they started bringing in the magical devices from Scanra, he’s done nothing but take notes for the mages who study how they’re made. The only reaction I got from him was ‘Ma better not see you like that.’ I had to remind him Mother’s safely in the north, waiting for the snows to melt so she can chop up more Scanrans.” Aly had left a pair of saddlebags by the door. Now she fetched them and put them on a long table beside George’s desk. “The latest documents from Grandda. He says to tell you no, you can’t go north, you’re still needed to watch the coast. Raiding season will begin soon.”
“He read my mind,” George said crossly. “That cursed war’s going into its second year, your mother’s in the middle of it, or will be once the fighting warms up, and I stay here, buried under paper.” He indicated his heaped desktop with a wave of a big hand and glared at the saddlebags. “I’ve not seen her in a year, for pity’s sake.”
“Grandda says he’s got an assistant trained for you,” Aly replied. “She’ll be here in a month or so. He is right. It’s no good holding Scanra off in the north if Carthak or Tusaine or the Copper Isles try nipping up bits of the south.”
“Don’t teach your gran to make butter,” George advised her drily. “I learned that lesson before you were born.” He knew Aly was right; he even knew that what he did was necessary. He just missed his wife. They hadn’t been separated for such a long stretch in their twenty-three years of marriage. “And an assistant in a month does me no good now.”
Aly gave him her most charming smile. “Oh, but Da, now you’ve got me,” she said as she gathered a wad of documents. “Grandda wanted me to take the job as it was.”
“I thought he might,” George murmured, watching as she leafed through the papers she held.
“I told him the same thing I did you,” replied Aly, setting documents in stacks on the long table. “I love code breaking and knowing all the tittle-tattle, but I’d go half mad having to do it all the time. I asked him if I could spy instead… .”
“I said no,” George said flatly, hiding his alarm. The thought of his only daughter living in the maze of dangers that was ordinary spy work, with torture and death to endure if she were caught, made his hair stand on end.
“So did Grandda,” Aly informed him. “I can take care of myself.”
“It’s not the life we want for our only girl,” George replied. “My agents are used to living crooked—you’re not. And whilst I know, none better, that you can look after yourself, it’s those other folk who worry me, the ones whose business it is to sniff out spies.” To change the subject he asked, “What of young what’s-his-name? The one you wrote was squiring you about Corus?”
Aly rolled her eyes as she sorted documents into stacks. “He bored me, Da. They all do, in time. None of them ever measures up to you, or Grandda, or Uncle Numy”—her childhood nickname for her adoptive uncle, Numair, the realm’s most powerful mage—“or Uncle Raoul, or Uncle Gary.” She shrugged. “It’s as if all the interesting men were born in your generation.” She scooped up another pile of documents from the desk. Soon she had the various reports, letters, messages, and coded coils of knotted string in four heaps: decode, important, not as important, and file. “So you can forget what’s-his-name. Marriage is for noblewomen with nothing else to do.”